Keystone Pipeline delayed: Big Oil denied

The Obama administration has delayed a decision on whether to approve the 1,700-mile-long Keystone Pipeline, linking Alberta oilfields to the U.S. Gulf Coast, when two months ago approval seemed like a done deal.

Environmental protests, from gates of the White House in Washington, D.C., to the street outside an Obama fundraiser in Seattle, helped persuade the administration to consider other routes.

Convenient to the president – who saw his green supporters on one side, and job-hungry labor unions on the other – the pipeline’s final fate will be decided after the 2012 election.

“Thank you, Mr. President, for standing up to Big Oil,” actor Robert Redford, a pipeline foe, said in a statement.

Obama was circumspect in a statement. The president was interrupted by anti-pipeline protesters during a Denver speech last month, and promised to look closely at the project.

“Because this permit decision could affect the health and safety of the American people as well as the environment, and because a number of concerns have been raised through a public process, we should take the time to ensure that all questions are properly addressed and all the potential impacts are properly understood,” said the president.

The $7 billion pipeline project has provoked intense opposition for three reasons:

— It would flow over the Ogallala Aquifer, a main source of drinking and irrigation water over an eight-state area ranging from South Dakota to the Texas Panhandle. Nebraska’s Republican governor strongly opposed the project.

— The Alberta oil sands project, where the pipeline’s oil would originate, is a “dirty” oil field. The extraction of oil from sands requires enormous amounts of energy. Greenhouse gas emissions at the 282-square mile site have more than canceled out reductions in emissions across the rest of Canada.

— The U.S. State Department’s environmental review, which gave a green light to the project last summer, became strongly suspect. Emails revealed a chummy relationship between officials at State and pipeline executives. The environmental review was done by a firm that does significant business with the pipeline builder.

The State Department’s inspector general’s office has begun to look at the process by which the project received the green light.

Reaction was on predictable lines.

“Terrible decision for the energy future of the country; brilliant decision for the president’s reelection campaign. And the administration owes a debt of thanks to the Republican leaders of Nebraska for providing an escape hatch on this,” Stephen Brown, a vice president of Tesoro refining, said in an email to the Washington Post.

Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said:

“President Obama is displaying leadership and courage in putting the interests of the American people before those of Big Oil. He has taken another significant step in the fight against climate change and in our march toward a clean energy future, which will mean healthier lives for all.”